An Eclectic Collection Of Frames

We don’t really know what comes before or after our lives. Or maybe you do. But I don’t. I like to imagine that if my life was a painting, hanging in a gallery, then it is sitting in a nice frame. What comes before and after my life is the frame. Since I’m just the painter, and I’m not the museum curator, I don’t have any actual control over the frame, but I like to think about what frames might be aesthetically pleasing with the picture I’m painting.

Out of chaos and mysterious physical law, consciousness arises seemingly ex-nihilo. Is there a purpose to life beyond fulfilling our genetic imperatives? This is not in the realm of science to answer.

Before I was, there was nothing. After I am, there is nothing.

This “life” that I’m experiencing is merely my vacation. In subjective time it may feel like some ninety plus years, but in real time it takes place in three days, whereupon I must resume my job at Amalgamated Axion Corporation where I work as a mid-level software engineer developing virtual reality software.

This “life” that I’m experiencing is part of a game that all nine billion plus humans aboard the Starship Hermetica play to pass time while we fly to Proxima Centauri without the benefit of faster than light travel. It is the hope of our scientists and sociologists that by continually replaying stages of human development we can discover more effective forms of government and prevent our next home from undergoing catastrophe.

This universe exists as a simulation inside of another universe. That universe too is a simulation. The “universe” as we can conceive of it is a line stretching into infinity on both ends of simulations inside simulations. Or perhaps, the worm of simulations bites its own tail, and we live in a loop of simulations.

When I was conceived, the Christian God created my consciousness out of his own divine spark. When I die, if I have repented and lived my life righteously I will ascend to heaven, otherwise I will descend into hell with the other sinners.

The Christian God is a Programmer who was lonely being the only being. So she created other consciousnesses. However, she had a dilemma. It would be boring if everyone was the same. So she created great variety and individuation between people. But not everyone got along, and there were certain people God wanted to hang out with. So she created the Earth as a testing ground to sort people out. Hell isn’t actually that bad, it’s just where the people God doesn’t like hang out.

When I die, I will be reincarnated into another body dependent on the spiritual advancement I made in this life, so that I may continue to learn lessons.

When I die, I will be presented with a list of all baby bodies that do not yet have a soul, and I will choose one to inhabit.

When I die, I will select the exact genes I wish to have in my next life. Then I will wait around in the loading screen until happenstance manages to bring my mother and father together to produce exactly the body that I want.

When I die, I realize this was just a dream.

When I die, I will wake up from my coma, and my family will be delighted.

Out of all the different possible parallel universes, seven billion intra-dimensional travelers from all across the multiverse have converged on Pleasure Sphere Earth to experience one of the greatest gatherings of all time, GAIA Fest, which convenes only once every 21 trillion years.

Earth is one huge stage and we are putting on the greatest production the universe has ever seen. After we die and we are backstage we’ll congratulate Hitler on playing such a hard role.

Earth is an insane asylum where deranged souls are placed until they finally learn their lessons and can rejoin the rest of soul-society.

Earth is a school where junior souls are placed until they’ve learned their lessons and can join soul-society in productive jobs.

The stage production that is life has a director and we just have to follow the roles we are given.

The stage production that is life has no director. It’s totally improvisational, and we have to make up our roles as we go.

My life takes place in an epic novel written by a brilliant Russian novelist. This explains the long periods of introspection and circumspection I am prone to.

In the beginning there was just Consciousness. And Consciousness was lonely and bored, for it knew everything and itself. So it decided to split itself up into innumerable beings, forget that it was everything, and experience the joy of the other.

When I die I could go to Valhalla, or Hades, or Heaven, or any of the afterlives. The Gods run these places like businesses, so they are always competing for new customers.

When I die I will live this life over yet again until I finally get it right.

When I die I will laugh as I finally get the joke.